


Daily Grind

by Hope



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-11
Updated: 2007-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester, post-2.01.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daily Grind

*

John Winchester doesn't know how long he's been in Hell exactly, but he figures it must have been some time because the internet's starting to make sense to him. Sure, the pages take an interminable length of time to load and invariably every time he clicks 'reply' on an email it somehow manages instead to 'reply to all', and he's lost track of the number of times Internet Explorer has crashed when he's just typed several thousand words into a text field, but… It makes more sense than it did when Sammy exasperatedly tried to give him 'email 101' at age fourteen.

Mainly because the only site he seems able to access is YaHell!. Which, granted, takes up enough time and space on its own. A couple of years after Sammy left, Dean had tried to get John to use this ‘MySpace for Hunters’ he’d heard of on the grapevine, but John’d turned him down, then. Now, managing scores of subscriptions to YaHell! Legions, not giving into that kind of herd behaviour while he was still alive is one of the small comforts John’s got left to experience.

The clock on the beige wall opposite his desk clicks back a minute from five and John sighs, tries to straighten from the hunch the chair forces him into. He grimaces at the sharp twinge in his back, knows it’ll only get worse as the afternoon goes on. Or rather, doesn’t go on. He stretches out his legs; they jar against the desk back. There’s a clicking, grinding sound and then the smell of burnt hair accompanying the rumbling growl at molar-cracking frequency as the heating clicks on, vent blasting into John’s face.

He sets his teeth, hooks a finger under the collar of his shirt, pulls a little in an attempt to loosen his tie.

“Winchester.” The salutation comes from the figure sidling up to the desk, slick, black shape vaguely humanoid, sharp white teeth in an oil-colored mouth. “Looking a little hot under the collar, there. Maybe you should call maintenance about that.”

“State your business,” John says, long past being riled or even exasperated.

“Release form,” the thing states, forked tongue flickering at the ragged edges where its lips ought to be.

“RFFH45A or B?” John asks.

“B.”

“And you’ve completed the PTRFFH forms?”

“Yuhuh.”

“A and B?”

The thing’s gaping mouth widens, as if it’s grinning. “Damn right I have.”

“In triplicate?”

It falters. “You didn’t tell me that when I brought it in last time.”

John blinks blankly. “Let me see if I can pull up your file.”

His knees pop as he pushes his chair back away from the too-low desk, wheels screeching and sticking on the slate-like unevenness of the stone floor. He stands when he gets to the bank of filing cabinets, which stretches in either direction as far as the eye can see. The polyester fabric of his trousers sticks to the backs of his thighs with sweat, itching when he pulls it away. “Name?” he shouts back over his shoulder.

The demon-thing shouts back something John doesn’t quite catch.

“What?”

It shouts again, a little louder, and John takes an approximation of it, sighs, starts walking.

By the time he’s back at the desk, the underarms of his shirt and nearly transparent with sweat, and the prickle of the woolen undervest is seriously starting to become a point of contention between his chest and inner arms. He drops back into the chair, wheels himself back to the desk where twin plumes of smoke rise from the gaping slits of the demon’s nostrils. “Sorry,” John says blandly. “Can’t seem to find your file. It was Careth with a C, right?”

The demon shifts a little. “K. Kareth with a K.”

“Oh.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. “Well,” the demon says, sharpened talons drumming against the desktop. “Can you give me the RFFH45B?”

“Not until you’ve filled out the RFFH45A,” John says.

“I submitted that already.”

“Via fax?”

“No, but the small print said that–”

“I’m afraid that unless you’ve submitted the PTRFFH forms C through M, you can only submit the RFFH24A via fax.”

The inkjet printer on John’s desk whines as it prints out a new PTRFFH forms; the cartridges need replacing, it’s only got streaky yellow left. “There’s a photocopier in the sixth circle,” John informs the demon as he stacks the 182-page form together. He decides not to tell the demon of its tendency to jam. Might as well leave some surprises. Besides, John’s already filed 948 maintenance requests on it; might as well delay another for as long as possible.

The demon snatches the stack as John holds it out. “See you soon, Winchester,” it hisses, stink like sulphur.

“Not likely,” John mutters under his breath. He moves the mouse to dispose of the magenta scrolling marquee screensaver; on screen the cursor moves an inch or two then stops, refusing to budge no matter how much John pushes the mouse around.

A ctrl+alt+delete or two later and the Windows startup music chimes distortedly through the cheap speakers. The CPU whirs at 100% before he can get the email program open again, and then a reminder pops up: the bots are done sweeping, it’s time for him to distribute the next 45,000,000 spam messages. John sighs. This means that YaHell! will be practically unusable until it’s done. The minute hand on the clock ticks back to 4.58.

“Johnny boy.”

John’s neck creaks as he looks up, and he hisses as one of the pages he’s counting slides its edge against the pad of his thumb, parting the skin easily in a long paper cut.

The demon standing before his desk is dark, shrunken but still somehow imposing, hip canted and red mouth gleaming. Its eyes are black obsidian, somehow making the skin - or hide, rather - around it seem paler than it is. “Hello, Meg.”

“Not Meg anymore,” it bares its teeth, more in amusement than irritation.

“Oh, I know that. But Meg sure was prettier. Man can dream, can’t he?”

It’s still for long moments, its gaze and fetid breath washing over him. “I suppose he can try,” it says finally, then a shuddery, drawn out _ss-ss-ss_ as it laughs.

“State your business,” John says, and it slaps down a stack of paper on the desk.

“FRFFH849Z.” It says. “In triplicate.”

John’s eyes narrow, and he draws the stack towards him, flicks through it. “Your superior signed this?”

“Sure did, Johnny,” it says. “Y’see, I just can’t _wait_ to get back out there and see your precious boys again.”

John presses his tongue against the back of his teeth, still going through the FRFFH849Z page by page. “I bet you can’t.”

“You can relate to that, can’t you?”

John looks up at it again, face just as impassive as the vicious black mask it wears. He shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “I guess.”

“You gonna stamp that for me?”

It picks up the release certificate while the imprint’s still smoking, blows the last wafts of it away and grins. “Well,” John says, feigning a sigh of disappointment. “I’ll miss you, but I guess it won’t be that long til I see you again.”

It hisses another laugh. “The boys, maybe,” it says.

John smiles. “Tell ‘em howdy from me, would you?”

“Oh,” it says, turning heel. “I surely will.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/52276.html


End file.
